RS

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

Olympics 2016: an inconvenient truth for the President.

Let me explain what happened here to President Obama with regard to the Olympic bid.

One has to make a distinction between the people of the world, and the governments of the world. The people of the world generally like the USA/Americans/the concept of America for one or more of the following reasons:

Because we are free;

Because we are vulgar;

Because we are loud;

And because we visibly do not care if anybody likes that or not.

Meanwhile, most national governments do not like the USA/Americans/the concept of America for one or more of the following reasons:

Because we are free;

Because we are vulgar;

Because we are loud;

And because we visibly do not care if anybody likes that or not.

So, when the President went to the IOC to get this valuable thing for his home city and country, I’m sure that he thought that he would be able to remedy the situation. But all that he did was make it clear to people who don’t like us very much – mostly for the ‘vulgar’ and ‘loud’ bits – that he and the USA could be quite gratifyingly (to them) snubbed. So they did. And they enjoyed doing it, because they know that there’s damned little that the USA can do to them about it.

Personally, I’m grateful: this is an incredibly cheap lesson in Foreign Relations 120: Why we don’t have better relations with certain countries. It is my sincere hope that the President take the hint, and stop worrying quite so much about our overseas reputation. And by ‘stop worrying quite as much’ I mean ‘visibly do not care.’

Moe Lane

PS: There are quite a few governments that do not hate us, of course. Unfortunately, these days one thing that they mostly have in common is in having been snubbed by this administration. It’d be great if that stopped happening.